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Leandra
Leandra Flavia Lavidia is a Nibenese adventurer and Daedra Hunter of noble descent. Of late, she has arrived to Valton, searching for, quote, "light-weight employment". __FORCETOC__ Character Sheet Name: Leandra Flavia Lavidia Age: 26 Race: Nibenese Imperial Gender: Female Birthsign: The Atronach Height: 5'5 Appearance: Despite her unusual vocation, Leandra still looks rather like your average young woman; or she would, that is - if this were the Nibenay. Unfortunately, this is Skyrim, whose average denizen is pale-skinned, built like a barrel and brushing six feet tall; in other words, everything that the Nibenese girl decidedly isn't. With her paltry 5'5, she will oftentimes seem almost comically short alongside your typical Nord - and that's before you realize someone has, as they say, gone to town on her tan skin, treating the entirety of her lithe, wiry body as a canvas upon which to tattoo esoteric patterns in every shade of blue imaginable. A flowing, swirling and oftentimes - apparently entirely nonsensical mess of shape and colour, to another Nibenay-born it would serve as a treasure-trove of information about Leandra's family, education and role in society; among the northmen, it seems rather more likely to bring to mind the painted tribute-cows sometimes offered to the giants. Even the adventurer's gaunt face hasn't avoided this dazzling onslaught, its entire lefthand side playing host to an extravaganza of wobbly waves and swirls that stop just short of swallowing her thin, slightly arched eyebrows. Said eyebrows are of the exact same charcoal-black colour as her messy mid-length hair - a colour that contrasts somewhat sharply with the bright blue of her large, cheerful eyes. Rather pronounced (but not to an Elven degree) cheekbones, a small, just slightly snub nose and lips that may be described as quite plump complete the picture, giving Leandra a pleasant, if slightly "soft" look - which is not really something you'd expect from a person who shoots crossbow bolts at Daedra for a living. Class: Mercenary, Daedra Hunter extraordinaire, all-purpose armed wanderer type; in other words, one of those countless hobbyist aristocrat adventurers that are both Tamriel's bane and its salvation. Skills: Hobbyist or no, there is no denying that Leandra is - a few (or, well, more than a few) eccentricities aside - quite the capable woman. Armed with a Synod education that is further bolstered by a few years of personal experiences, she has an above-average understanding of the theory of magic (though, much to the frustration of her tutors and the disappointment of her family, is completely and thoroughly useless when it comes to actually casting spells) and can boast quite the repository of knowledge on all things Daedric, including the ability to read Daedric runes. On the more practical end of the spectrum, the frivolous Nibenese can be quite handy in a tight spot, too; while by no means a master, she knows her way around a few types of weapons, most prominently being a good shot with her crossbow, and can hold her own in a fistfight - so long as she isn't expected to actually stand still and take any blows herself. Clothing/Armour: Ever since coming to Skyrim, the Nibenese has made a habit of going around dressed in enough layers to do an onion proud. A blouse of faded blue, padded for protection against blunt trauma, and somewhat baggy brown pants are paired with knee-high tough leather boots, reinforced with steel around the toes and another plate of steel sewed onto the right one to protect her shin. Further, the mercenary is also clad in a steel breastplate to protect the front of her body, along with a fingerless leather glove over her left palm. Said glove has a slim green gem into its side, which has a faint, cold glow - an unmistakeable hallmark of enchanted equipment, this particular piece serving the purpose of augmenting Leandra's physical strength. Of late, she has taken to covering this ensemble with a fairly unremarkable, dark brown woolen trenchcoat, going down to her knees. This, however, is where things start getting a little unusual. The right sleeve of this coat quite clearly does not match the left - and not only just in colour, being of a slightly lighter shade of brown; no, what tends to raise more eyebrows is the fact it seems to hide a bloated and misshapen lump that is a good deal thicker than her left arm, in addition to having a small, gently steaming brass pipe sticking out of the shoulder. And this pipe is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, for what hides in the sleeve is a mess of tubes, pistons and clamps, descending from a clunky Dwemer pauldron (the source of the afore-mentioned pipe) down her entire arm until it attaches itself to an equally clunky gauntlet that clearly also has its origins with the Deep Elves of yore. Weapons: As any mercenary worth their salt (and a good few others who aren't), Leandra never leaves home (err, temporary residence) without her armament. A typical straight Imperial shortsword (fourth from the right), the sort often favoured by Legionnaires in the east, is her primary close combat weapon, accompanied by a steel dagger with silvered edges - the "Just In Case", as the Nibenese refers to it herself. Those are merely sidearms, however, compared to the heavy Dwemer crossbow (lovingly referred to as "Veronica", or simply "Vera" for those more intimate moments that they share) that is undeniably the centerpiece of her armoury; a somewhat unusual weapon that packs quite a punch and features a drum of twelve bolts rather than the usual single-bolt capacity of your average crossbow, Veronica seems to have come from the same place as the augmentations infesting Leandra's arm. Miscellaneous items: In addition to the backpack slung usually over her shoulder, which contains such basic but all-important supplies as food and water (and occasionally wine), Leandra also carries a few other items of interest. Tied firmly to her belt is a slightly clunky silver locket whose lid is engraved with the symbol of the Synod; around her neck is a second, smaller locket, this one with a plain lid but holding a masterfully painted miniature image of the White Gold Tower and the surrounding countryside within. On a more practical note, also typically hanging from the Daedra Hunter's belt is a spare drum of bolts for Vera. Personality: To call Leandra "odd" would be a bit of an understatement. Though possessed of a wonderful memory, the Nibenese pays for it by being plagued with unusual thought patterns that range from simple fickleness to what may well be considered full-blown madness - and go on to cover nearly everything in-between. Pile on top of that her characteristic wild, unpredictable mood swings, a truly Nibenese lack of inhibitions of the more intimate sort, her rather meandering manner of speech and the occasional spot of auditory and olfactory hallucinations, and it becomes obvious that her psyche has not escaped being marked by the dangerous lifestyle she's chosen for herself. Major flaw: Unfortunately for the young adventurer, "potent" is not all that the Dwemer contraption clinging to her right arm is - it's also moody and possessed of quite the independent streak. Not even Leandra herself (who may well be the only person in the world to have even the slightest clue as to the inner workings of her augmented arm's cogitators) can ever be sure that this most unusual of her features will behave when she needs it to; the mechanism's actions can range from sincerely helpful to wildly hostile, including bending her arm in ways it was never meant to go - which, of course, inevitably ends with things (read: her bones) breaking. Background: Hailing from the ranks of the ancient Nibenese battlemage magocracy, Leandra had the regrettable misfortune of being the seventh of eight children - which, while nowhere near as tragic as it would have been had she been born a commoner, still left her with remarkably little in the way of fortune to inherit. The best she could expect was to be palmed off to the Synod at an early age, afforded a splendid (if overly arcanely inclined) education by her parents' riches; but while all of her siblings could claim at least some vestige of magical talent (most notably, her eldest brother serves with distinction as a Legionary Battlemage to this day, while the third-oldest of the current Lavidian generation enjoys a comfortable existence as the court-witch of Evermore in High Rock), things stubbornly refused to start looking up for the soon-to-be adventurer. As time passed, it became increasingly more obvious that her talent for the theoretical aspects of spellcraft would forever be outweighed by an utter lack of practical skills, making it only a matter of time until either she, her parents, or her tutors gave up. Leandra turned out the first to crack. One sunny morning no less that eight years ago, the young noble turned up on the doorstep to her parents' summer mansion, informing them that she was leaving and that she'd appreciate some coin to get her on her way. Only too eager to push her out into the world to make something of herself, they obliged, and thus it came to be that this particular scion of the illustrious House Flavius would spend the next few years of her life wandering the width and length of Tamriel. The Dwemer Arm "Pistons rose upwards along her arm from the clunky gauntlet that, along with the steaming tube, was the majority of what most people got to see of the entire mess when her coat was on. Four of them there were - front and back, left and right, one along each side of the arm; metal clamps that seemed rather menacing clung to her flesh near the elbow, keeping the pistons fixed there, while two slightly bulkier ones descended from her shoulder-piece - which itself was not without bulk, and still retained its gently puffing pipe. Countless small and quite sleek tubes descending from various points of the extensive augmentations completed the picture, hanging on to the flesh and blood part of her in the same intrusive nature of the elbow-clamps along with sheets of metal that hugged her arm rather tightly, scattered around it seemingly at random and connected, one way or another, to the rest of the machinery. To top it all off, the entire ensemble seemed to occasionally twitch slightly." Activity in Valton The fledgling town of Valton was treated to the unusual sight of the young Imperial and her Dwemeri arm one sunny morning, Leandra having decided to make her way to the capital of the new hold in search of easy and 'relaxing' work for a change of pace after a period of intense (and horrifying) work. In a way, she succeeded in finding something of the sort when the Jarl enlisted her aid in locating the missing court-wizard, Fiona Barrow-Heart. However, as a search through the Reachwoman's tower and the questioning of several local townspeople (a progress still in process, hindered by the onset of a storm) the following day revealed, Leandra would not easily get away from Daedra - and if she did not go looking for the misdeeds of the Daedric Princes, they would find her instead. Trivia *Leandra is a believer in the old Nibenese cult of Ancestor-Moths; understandable, considering she hails from a family affluent enough to maintain their own flock of moths for divination and burial rites. *The Dwemer augmentations on her arm have a consciousness of their own, in the shape of cogitators (otherwise known as machine spirits) bound to the contraption by the Dwemer enchanter who crafted it. *Contrary to what most might believe, she can actually remove her Dwemer augmentations. However, it is a rather complicated and extremely time-consuming process, not to mention the pain involved in putting the machine back on; for this reason, Leandra will rarely ever be seen with her arm back to its normal shape nowadays. *Her eccentric behaviour is reminiscent of quite a few symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder. She experiences olfactory and auditory hallucinations, appears to avoid closer relationships with people, has been known to lapse into unusual speech and thought patterns, tends to explain seemingly ordinary events by connecting them with much more sinister things, and seems to have trouble preventing herself from acting in a pointedly eccentric fashion. *Leandra's character concept is based on pop culture depictions of Van Helsing, the Ghostbusters (more of the crew of the cartoon Extreme Ghostbusters rather than the original cast), Techpriest Felicia Tayber as depicted in the novel Death or Glory by Sandy Mitchell, and Doctor Mordin Solus of Mass Effect fame. Category:Character Category:Imperial Category:Nibenese